Despair is a cancer that if left untreated will spread and multiply until it completely suffocates your last gasp for breath. In the midst of difficult circumstances despair grows into a self-reenforcing cycle that slowly clouds your vision until you see nothing but darkness. How to survive despair? How to keep one’s self from becoming a victim of this enemy that robs you of everything? When all is black and hopeless we must look to something which brings us life. This is not mental gymnastics, this is not dishonestly “looking on the bright side”. It could, quite literally, save your life.

A client of mine once was in a bad spot. She was depressed, her health was poor and she was addicted to alcohol. When the pandemic came the isolation nearly killed her. Holed up in her house, surrounded by darkness and cable news, there was very little to remind her of life and much to remind her of death. But one day she looked in her backyard just in time to see a mother deer giving birth to a new baby. Witnessing new life entering this world shook her to the core. Her “baby deer” moment held near miraculous significance for her and she held onto to it in her memory like a mental talisman.

For me, I recently found myself in a situation I could have never imagined, facing the awful reality of a friend in deep crisis. At moments I experienced being overwhelmed and my heart was fearful. My soul cried out from a deep place “Lord have mercy”, but I could not perceive Gods presence in the moment or the situation.

Scrolling through my phone I found a photo of my kids. In the photo Abner is sitting in the bathtub and Zipporah, back turned to camera, is watching and gleefully amazed by the site of her brother sitting in water. Baths are a new concept to her and the opportunity to splash water made her face light up as she smiled and laughed.

The photo shook me out of the darkness that surrounded me. I became grounded and calm, able to press on and make it through the moment.

There is a story in the Bible book of Numbers, where the Israelites are wandering the wilderness. They are hungry, exhausted, depleted, thirsty, and they begin to despair. God’s answer is to send snakes to bite the people.

In anguish the people cry out for deliverance and God has Moses build a bronze snake. Anyone who chooses to look at the bronze snake will not be killed by the poison running through their veins.

The Lord said to Moses, “Make a snake and put it up on a pole; anyone who is bitten can look at it and live.”

Numbers 21:8

Brutal and unfair as that response may be, the hard lesson is easy to grasp. God doesn’t take the snakes away, but gives the people a way to survive. God is conveying a deeper truth: despair is more dangerous than pain or even death.

Despair kills people. It ruins lives and destroys communities. Despair is even dangerous enough to destroy the planet.

Look very closely. Lying amongst the shattered mess of this world are shards of heaven, hints that maybe not everything is hopeless and dead. For those whose life is hell, they need heaven today. A remedy for despair that can bring them back to life and give just enough air to not let the soul drown.